GRAND RAPIDS - They were the children. They were sitting at classroom desks when airplanes collided with the towers in New York City a decade ago. Parents and teachers across the nation whispered about what happened to shield their ears and hearts but the whispering stopped and the kids grew up.

Sept. 11, 2001 marks a significant milestone in Matt Gauthier’s life.

”It was my first exposure to all the terrible things going on in the world that happen beyond my fifth grade classroom and from that point on it’s hard to go back to living in a ‘simple, innocent’ time,” said the 20-year-old Grand Valley State University psychology junior.

”I remember watching the news with my Dad in the following months and asking him why all of a sudden the world was a dangerous place, full of bad people, and he said it’s always been that way, you’d just never been exposed to it before.”

A group of West Michigan students from Calvin College and Grand Valley State University gathered at a coffeehouse recently to talk about the impact the Sept. 11 attacks has had on their generation.

Though the students agreed they could not speak definitively for a generation, common threads were apparent.

”Sept. 11 is not just a buzz word, but it became one because it’s used to justify just about everything,” said Calvin College senior Peter Speelman. “And with reason, Pearl Harbor was a military target but the World Trade Centers were not.”

In Their Own Words: Ten years later, how has Sept. 11 impacted Gen Y?

Is Gen Y more cynical because of Sept. 11? Do they avoid thinking about the attacks? How have conspiracy theories affected their views?

A group of West Michigan students from ages 17 to 23 filled out a survey about their personal feelings on Sept. 11. Click on their name to read their responses.

• Adily Elmi: I was in Kenya and I was just getting out of school. I believe I was in 6th grade and I was around 10 years old. It was all over the news.

• Nina Miller: "I still remain confused as to how a small group of people could hate so much as to kill so many innocent people."

• Tony Campos: "I was in 8th grade and I was coming into my second period class and my teacher said something was going on in NYC and she told us to sit down."

• Peter Speelman: "The most shocking memory for me was definitely the image of a man jumping out of one of the towers."

• Nathan Tripp: "I think 9/11 probably made our generation more jingoistic, knee-jerky, desensitized and stupider than it could have been."

• Lynn Dimick: "There was something in the atmosphere, at least, that made me certain something was wrong."

• Matthew Gauthier: "9/11 was my first exposure to all the terrible things going on in the world that happen beyond my 5th grade classroom."

The result: feelings of impending doom. The insecurity created from Sept. 11 dominated the discussion, with participants talking about how national insecurity created a less transparent government, a less trusting population and less educated approaches to problems.

”A lot of people our age won’t be going to a memorial next week and part of that is because our generation is distrusting and fearful,” said Christine Zwart, a Calvin College senior. “It makes us inherently less likely to participate in big group events that force us to remember terrorists attacks and the is the world a dangerous place.”

The group found common ground in the fact many of them hadn’t actually given the attacks thought for years unless it was on TV. They also agreed that if it was on TV, they were likely to switch the channel.

They said the media and government manipulated the horrendous event in ways that made society worse. They agreed Generation Y is a fearful one. And they agreed Muslims received the worst backlash from the event.

”I’m sick of it. I know it was a terrible thing in our country’s history but it’s used in so many bad ways that I don’t want to read about it and I don’t want to hear it in political speeches. It was used to foster discrimination,” Gauthier said.

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They discussed how young people seem to only care about the attacks as much as they were affected by them. Many West Michigan teens did not feel the ground rumble that day in New York City, so its been easy to push the memories aside.

But 17-year-old Zach Schleiffer, a Cascade Township firefighter who moved to Grand Rapids from New Jersey last year, thinks about the smoke billowing from the towers every day. He is an organizer for the Memorial Stair Climb event at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel for fallen firefighters on Sept. 11.

”I thought I was going to die. I watched Air Force One fly over our house,” he said. “It was a normal day here for last year’s anniversary but back home (in New York) it was in the air, you saw the look on people’s faces.”

Schleiffer convinced the group they were more apathetic than their cohorts in New York.

Grand Valley State University social and cultural history professor Steve Tripp, 55, said it’s only fair that young people limit emotions when it comes to the terrorist attacks.

”Young people’s understanding of 9/11 competes with all sorts of feelings, especially in terms of the economy, with parents losing jobs and declining incomes,” Tripp, 55, said. “There is a lot less certainty about the American dream or that they can achieve everything they thought they once could. Sept. 11 is understood as part of this larger cultural context, in some ways, it’s part of a general anxiety and worry.”

Calvin College philosophy professor Kelly Clark agrees, adding the crucial role the Internet has played in shaping young people today, especially in providing 24-hour access to bad news and homemade bomb recipes.

”Our characters become more solid at a certain stage from 18 to 22. At that age people are making their own decisions about a person they want to be,” Clark said. “It’s just a formative period for people, it’s when people often decide their major life source.”

Zwart, 22, wonders if the stereotype of selfishness of her generation plays a role in why terrorism works so well in instigating fear.

Calvin College Islamic student Adily Elmi, 21, viewed Sept. 11 from his home country of Somalia. He said he is lucky that his name is not a commonly known one like Mohammad, allowing him to avoid the same snap judgment some friends have faced.

Elmi wonders when people will stop scrutinizing those who believe in Islam.

”How can we approach this problem?” Elmi asked. “You can’t just stop it right away, first we need to understand that we are all individuals and we need to respect other people’s faiths and cultural backgrounds. Judge people for what they do, not who they are.”

Tony Campos, of Grand Haven, doesn’t think his generation will be the one to change the world. But the 22-year-old with a torn American flag tattooed to the inside of his left arm is still proud of his country in some ways.

”I feel like nothing is ever going to change because we let more terrible things come from the tragedy,” Campos said. “But wanting to show that America is better than that has made me more of a patriot.”